Blender 2.8 beta released!

[senorpablo]

No need to. All good. I am evolving. I'll be just fine... But it would just make sense for folks to be able to swap Y and Z in Blender, for those who struggle with having Z up... Isn't it a default of Y up in both Maya and 3DSMax (but with the ability to swap them)? That is one hell of a lot of 3D artists with many years of Y up...

Max is Z up with no option to change.

[FrankPooleFloating]

Oh. Okay. I was going by this, per a Maya User Guide:

In animation and visual effects, the tradition is to use Y as the “up” or elevation axis, with X and Z as the “ground” axes. However, some other industries traditionally use Z as the up axis and X and Y as the ground axes.

Maya lets you switch the up axis between Y and Z. Select Window > Settings/Preferences > Preferences, then click Settings in the list on the left.

... and assumed 3DSMax was the same as Maya, both being AD...

But in the end, I have adapted much easier than I thought I would. And I am still also working in LW (Y-Up), until Octane is available in 2.8, and I'm finding that I am able to go back forth with no probs. Wouldn't have thought that possible, working in LW for almost 20 years...

God, I effing love Blender! Never thought I would say that either... Once I have completely migrated to Blender, I may write up a nice piece about my migration/evolution. All I know right now is that LW feels like a (slow, dim-witted, physically handicapped) child's toy to me now. Virtually everything I touch in Blender has me saying "that is ten goddamn times better than how LW does it", for those things that LW is actually able to also do...

[FrankPooleFloating]

Okay, so I am perplexed with how little activity there seemingly is in the Blender Octane forums, compared to other plugs, including LW... Maybe I am wrong somehow, but it seems there are less topics than there should be.. less views... What gives? Are there actually way less Blender Octane users than many of the other plugs? Could that even be possible? I believe in safety-in-numbers, and if Blender is not getting the same kind of love that LightWave or Houdini gets from Juanjo, this would make me a little uneasy I think... I'm encouraged that there appears to be multiple devs working on Blender plug, including the great Lino! So that is cool. But as I am investing a buttload of time and energy into my planned migration to Blender, I'm a wee bit nervous...

And I must say I am a little shocked that Blender Principled BSDF -> Octane Universal Mat conversion is not built in, or better yet internally able to convert on the fly, or just use PrBSDF without conversion... It would be so freakin' epic if we could jump back and forth between them in Blender... Need to render in Octane? BANG! Need to render in EEVEE or export a glTF? POW!... Of course, I have not had the pleasure of using Octane in Blender yet, since I am only working in 2.8 as I try to master the damn thing. So please excuse me guys if my information or thinking is way off. I just can't wait to pounce on Octane in 2.8 and want this to be as wonderful an experience as I am hoping for.

Also, I might as well ask here: Can Blender Octane render crap with modifiers on them (sub-d, boolean etc)? Any limitations with this stuff that I should expect?

[Goldorak]

Blender is incredibly important to us, and in the best possible hands with both Lino and Tom dedicated to improving it. We plan to have 2.8 integration ready by the final release of 2.8.(at minimum with V4.02 and v.2018.1 stable, and possibly v.2019.1 XB)

[Zay]

A revamped UI and a lot of other enhancements were done, and most importantly (for me anyway) is that left click select is now default and fully integrated.

Spending som time with this 2.8 version and I love it !
The new UI simply did it for me and I can see myself putting MODO on the shelf in the very near future.

[J.C]

Blender is incredibly important to us, and in the best possible hands with both Lino and Tom dedicated to improving it. We plan to have 2.8 integration ready by the final release of 2.8.(at minimum with V4.02 and v.2018.1 stable, and possibly v.2019.1 XB)

What Blender plugin really needs is:
• more care when new version is released,
• updated manual,
• beta testers,
• developers answering questions.

[FrankPooleFloating]

Plus one yo!

Hey J.C, can you possibly answer my question above? Is Octane Blender able to render stuff with modifiers (sub-d, boolean etc) on them? This is one of the many burning Octane Blender questions I have...

[grimm]

Not J.C., modifiers work but they can slow things down because every time you update a mesh they have to be ran first before the mesh gets sent to the GPU. The devs may need to adjust how this works as I think there was issues with the modifiers being ran even if it wasn't necessary. J.C. might know more about that.

[J.C]

Plus one yo!

Hey J.C, can you possibly answer my question above? Is Octane Blender able to render stuff with modifiers (sub-d, boolean etc) on them? This is one of the many burning Octane Blender questions I have...

It does render stuff with modifiers without issues. As Grimm noticed Just be careful if you are rendering animation with modifiers. They are applied every frame which takes time especially when there are many objects with them.

[FrankPooleFloating]

Hey, thanks so much guys! There's more where that came from. Maybe you can answer some more questions, when I get a chance to corral them all and plop them here.